The operation took place around 1 a.m. on Friday 13 May 2016.[1] Officers intervened at Yirimadio Kadobougou in Bamako as the driver and his apprentices were unloading bags of drugs in an unfinished house.[2] The intervention unit led by Captain Moussa Touré put the traffickers out of action at the scene.[1] Ongoing inquiries led officers to arrest suspects believed to be involved in the international drug-trafficking network.[2] At least two people were arrested in the operation.[3][4] The suspects were to be taken before the prosecutor of the specialised judicial unit.[1] Further hearings of the suspects arrested in Mali were expected that Thursday.[3]
Officers seized 1,505 bricks of cannabis, known in French as chanvre indien, weighing 2.7 tonnes in total.[2][4] The cannabis was carried on a trailer truck from Ghana bound for Bamako.[2][4] The truck had transited through Burkina Faso and entered Mali in the south through Sikasso.[3] The load was disguised as bales of second-hand clothes and hidden in a compartment fitted between the cab and the trailer.[2][4] RFI reported the market value at about 100 million CFA francs (over 152,000 euros).[3][4]
The narcotics office described the haul as a record seizure for the office in Mali.[2][4] RFI described it as the largest drug seizure around the capital in twenty years.[3] An investigator said the operation had dismantled a Ghana-Burkina-Mali trafficking network, with arrests also reported in Accra.[3][4] The seized drugs were to be transferred to the Directorate of Pharmacy and Medicine, the body responsible for storing and destroying seized drugs.[2]
Part of the cannabis had been delivered before the truck reached Bamako, suggesting Bamako was not its only destination.[4]
